Independent Journalist & Author

The Nation has posted my article on the California wildfires that almost–but didn’t–burn Fox TV founder and Trump confidant Rupert Murdoch’s $28.8 million mansion to the ground. The fires and storms ravaging the planet are only going to get worse, especially if we don’t end the power of climate deniers…. Read more

Contrary to initial reports, the lawsuit Donald Trump’s personal lawyers brought against Greenpeace on behalf of a $3.5 billion logging company is not over, while new science shows surviving climate change is impossible without healthier forests. I explain in The Nation:… Read more

In a Nation investigative exclusive, I edited this jaw-dropping expose by David Dayen, revealing how America’s biggest bank paid its fine for the 2008 mortgage crisis–with phony mortgages! Specifically, JPMorgan allegedly claimed credit for forgiving loans on properties–wait for it–that it no longer owned. The bank came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead;the rest of us, not so much. And there is strong evidence CEO Jamie Dimon knew and approved of the scheme:… Read more

As Donald Trump gleefully incites violence and white supremacists and others carry it out, what is the best response–the nonviolence of Martin Luther King, Jr., or the street fighting of Antifa? That’s the question my colleague Sasha Abramsky brilliantly reports and discussed in this piece I edited:… Read more

Why, as many as ransacking America’s hometown newspapers can buy, of course! Read this stunning expose of vulture capitalist Randall D. Smith, whose investment firm makes a habit of buying and then destroying once-proud newspapers. Reporter Julie Reynolds explains how 6 of America’s 10 biggest newspaper owners now are investment firms, in this piece I edited for The Nation:… Read more

We’ve known for decades that global warming would make extreme weather worse, but climate deniers have blocked solutions. It’s past time to call climate denial what it is: pre-meditated murder…. Read more

Latest Book

By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did: leak top secret documents revealing that the US government was spying on hundreds of millions of people around the world. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, the way he did it, you need to know the stories of two other men.

The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same surveillance ten years before Snowden did and got crushed. The other is The Third Man, a former senior Pentagon official who comes forward in this book for the first time to describe how his superiors repeatedly broke the law to punish Drake—and unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches.

About Mark

Independent journalist Mark Hertsgaard is the author of seven books that have been translated into sixteen languages, including Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing in the Age of Snowden; HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth; and A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles. He has reported from twenty-five countries about politics, culture and the environment for leading outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Time, Mother Jones, NPR, the BBC and The Nation, where is the environment correspondent. He lives in San Francisco.